2. Stephen Malkmus has the kind of face that looks different every time you look at it. And we don't think it is a gained weight/lost weight thing. It might be a haircut thing. But it is completely fascinating. It made watching the DVD really interesting. Perhaps not so strangely then, the rail thin 1992-era Malkmus, particularly as seen in the amazing shoegazey and powerful video for "Here," looks a lot like Lilys' Kurt Heasley of the same time period. We saw Mudhoney Saturday with the Noizers and noted that Mark Arm also has a similar sort of look -- perhaps its the nose. Though not as similar as Malkmus and Heasley of 13 years or so ago.

Picked up the new Stereolab comp yesterday during the failed attempt to get the reissue of The Cure's Faith. After watching the accompanying DVD last night, we've come to the realization, probably about 10 years after everyone else, that Laetitia Sadler is a bit of a looker, isn't she?

April 26, 2005

"If you open your mouth I can't be held responsible..." - The Cure.

According to this post at ILM, The Glove's Blue Sunshine will be reissued and expanded within the context of The Cure reissues that are currently in the offing. We sold our copy of Blue Sunshine a long time ago, but maybe, just maybe, we'll be compelled enough to purchase the re-issue. We don't know why. Besides "This Green City" and "Like An Animal" we can't really recall getting much out of the record. Guess we're just hopeless optimists. In related news, the reissue of Faith streeted today, as did the revamped 17 Seconds and Pornography. That's a quick way to blow through about $70, innit? Well, not exactly. We strolled over to the Newbury Comics at Government Center today at 2:15PM EST and they were sold out of all three releases that came out today. They were going to be restocked by this evening, so no harm done. But we were really surprised at the demand.

While searching for info about the BOLD reunion we came across this news item that states that the Judge and Bold discographies will see re-release in late June. So perhaps we'll just wait for the realio dealios to hit the racks again and buy retail. More about it here.

In case you live under a rock and don't read Stereogum, here is a link to an animated video for Arcade Fire's "Neighborhood #3." It is pretty intense, although you will wish that it was a little bigger.

Vinyl Journey/Vinyl Mine (which is it, anyway?) revisits the first Squirrel Bait record and has some good things to say about it, nerddom and revenge. There are really good links accompanying the piece, too.

In case Scenestars' NIN album stream goes down, you can catch it here at the NIN MySpace hizzy. Since we're already basically reprinting The Gum's material, anyway. H-Dawg from Accounts Receivable sent us a link to information about Reznor's offering up the component parts of some of the songs from the record for fans to remix using Apple's Garageband app. Check it out.

April 25, 2005

"Hurry up, hurry up, hurry." - Fudge.

Holy crap, New York Hardcore behemoths Bold reformed and just played two reunion shows. A little blurb and some MP3s, including the excellent "Nailed to the X," are here at the R5 Productions site [scroll down to April 23rd]. As Catbirdseat points out, the R5 page is excellent in that it has a lot of MP3s, so make sure to snoop around. That said, guess it's time to dig out C. Jones' hand-screened BOLD T. [UPDATE: I can't believe it, the Bold post has already rotated off the R5 page and we hadn't grabbed the MP3s. Damn. Well, back to searching EBay.]

You can stream the new NINrecord over at Scenestars. We did. It is pretty good. We kind of gave up on the band after The Downward Spiral because Reznor's lyrics were always in the same meter and it got to the point where you could pretty much predict what would come out of his mouth next because of the obvious and strict adherence to rhyme scheme. So, besides a cursory listen to The Fragile, this is the first time we've paid attention to NIN in about a decade. And we're glad we've come around again. Reznor's seems to have shed his predilection for sounding mercilessly heavy, and that makes this record incredibly listenable.

Tiny Mix Tapes has the shizzy on the Stereolab box set that drops this week. We've been snooping around for a copy of The Noise of Carpet EP, perhaps we'll just bite the bullet and buy this comp instead, as it includes TNOC and so much more. Or maybe we'll just continue to be cheap bastards and keep searching for the EP.

Here's a really funny show flyer for a Joey Sweeney show. We don't know whether it is Sweeney making fun of himself (which would be brilliant) or others making fun of Sweeney. But the quotes from various publications are GOLD. My favorite is Crewcial.org's typically brutal promise: "We're going to stab him in the face."

So how about a song then? Deep in the dark recesses of all things Lilys are some obscure notations of wondrous things one cannot get one's hands on. Like tracking the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, there are only mysterious texts to guide us or to suggest the existence of certain items we would be very, very excited to lay hands on. Such as the several videos noted at the bottom of this Lilys discography. Or recordings referred to as The Station Tapes or Lilys in 1992. One thing that seems like it may be easier to turn up one day is the Simple Machines RecordsNeapolitan Metropolitan triple 7" box set (on colored vinyl, natch). We hope to acquire this set one day, but in the meantime we often enjoy listening to a rip of a cassette dub of one of the songs, Fudge's "Montpelier Train." According to the FAQ at the Lilys fan site, there is some linkage way back between the Lilys and Fudge, and the site's information points to a double 7" on Brilliant Records as one of the earliest Kurt Heasley compositions. Yet another thing to search out. Anyhoo, enjoy "Montpelier Train."

Speaking of old relatively D.C.-oriented rock, here are some pictures of Eggs practicing for the Teenbeat reunion show they played. Wish we'd been there. More about Eggs here. This page pointed us to Rob Christiansen's band's page, which pointed us the these Wimp Factor 14 MP3s! We'd be substantially happier to find MP3s from the Vehicle Flips' "In Action," but this does a good job of filling that hole.

April 23, 2005

"Nothing is forever, and our efforts can go to waste." - Embrace.

Rain falls on Cambridge.

A discussion of the method: As we've alluded to here often, an ongoing project we are working on is obtaining CD or digital versions of "important" songs or records that we currently only have on cassette. The definition of important, of course, is subjective. But one good barometer of importance is garnering a coveted spot on a mixtape. We've got scores of old mixes sitting around in boxes, and their track listings are fertile ground for ideas of things we'd like to rescue from obscurity. Now that we live in such a glorious digital age, acquiring some of the material is fairly easy, as we noted previously in our post about how EMusic now has some seven-inches available for digital download now. So Hurl's My Pal God singles: easy. Embrace's "Last Song," which appeared on quite a few mixes: easy, now that ITunes has it. We downloaded it this morning and are rocking out to it now.

But poring over mixtapes has presented us with some formidable challenges, too. Where to get a copy of Bethlehem, PA's The Original Sins' "Rise," let along the entire Self Destruct record it came from? And what of material we hardly knew anything about in the first place, more than a decade ago? Of course, Google has proved invaluable in this effort. Case in point: Who the hell were the Primitive Painters? What was the name of the record that servicable, if not a little wimpy, songs like "Okay," "Something Snaps" and "Different" came from? Where did the band come from? Where did they go? Well, here are all the answers. Thanks, Internets!

The band, apparently one of the 129 greatest O.C. bands ever [this list at first glance does not include Uniform Choice, who should appear at #1, and therefore this list blows], was from Orange County, California. They released their debut full-length "Dirtclods" in 1992 on an English indie, tooled around for a couple more years, and then broke up. The band has recently reformed and written and released a new EP. I think AllMusic's non-interest in the band probably is a reasonable estimation of the band's overall place in the world of music. But still, in the supposed digital age, the excuses for material being unavailable for weirdos like us to track down and purchase are getting fewer and fewer.

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The WFMU blog points us to this amazing animated cartoon at the Hitachi web site that re-interprets an old School House Rock! episode to explain a 10-fold increase in memory capacity it has developed for its hard drives. Unexpectedly wildly amusing.

April 19, 2005

"Love everybody, it's alright." - MantaRay.

So we promised some discussion of MantaRay, the longtime Philadelphia power-pop combo comprised of a core trio of Radnasty alumni, and now apparently featuring erstwhile Kam Fong drummer Mike Boran on guitar as well. The act is fronted by Erik Evol, and the rhythm section (last we checked) was comprised of able rockers Chris Hate and Mitch Joy. There are two proper MantaRay releases, MantaRay Gives The World Away [scroll down] and The Betty Poperetta, and apparently there are hundreds of unreleased songs, as well. You know how Clicky Clicky goes nuts for the unreleased stuff. Anyhoo, the MantaRay web site went dead some time back, but we've catalogued some related links in an earlier post that we can't find now. A short trip to Google will provide you with pretty much all there is to know available in the public sphere.

MantaRay's live act was really strong, and the band had a lot of fun running all their songs together into various "chunks" which were interspersed with Hendricks-esque (at least in theory, if not in execution, not to take anything away from the band) electric seques that were pretty remarkable to experience. From 400 miles away it is pretty hard to figure out what is up with the band, but we are pleased to hear they are still gigging. Anyone who might have any unreleased recordings of the band feel free to get in touch.

Betty Poperetta was recorded primarily at Kam Fong's Anti-Studio in Norristown, PA, and we are fortunate to have a few cuts on hand that didn't make it onto the record, including the band's popular, or at least once quite popular, "Saturday (Norristown)." The version offered here is different than the couple arrangements the band used live in the dozens of times we saw them. This version in particular shines the spotlight on former Fugitive of Funk multi-instrumentalist Ernie Whyte's sax playing. Enjoy.

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Bob Mould links to an article about the death of dynamic range, something the Noizers and we discussed earlier this month at Brighaaaam's. A really illuminating piece. "Thus, when aggressive peak clipping is used, the record company is DESTROYING part of the music."

We've heard the Bloc Party record, and we like it. We hate when the hype is even just partly justified. Same thing happened to us with The Futureheads. Elsewhere: the new White Stripes single sounds like The Darkness. The new Okkervil River tune posted recently at Fluxblog or thereabouts is really good.

We've been remiss in noting that the Farmhands' web site has launched. It is still sort of in beta, but it gives a sense of what the band is about. The site has three MP3s, have a listen why don't you?

Brighaaaam has added a blog, errr, non-blog, to the place where Dave Brigham meets Dot Com. A good place to go for ruminations from a fan of Slidemyfavoritelocalbandslide, Phantom Tollbooth, M.D.C. and the like.

April 18, 2005

"If you wait another day, then I will wait a day." - Palace Songs.

We took in a thoroughly satisfying performance by Bonnie "Prince" Billy (a.k.a. Will Oldham, who is something of a cousin of our homie TMH) and Matt Sweeney (the dood from Chavez, right?) at the MFA, which is two shows into its current and obviously named Indie Rock at the MFA music series. Anyway, Oldham and Sweeney have collaborated for a new record called Superwolf, on which apparently Sweeney wrote music to go with Oldham's lyrics. Based on what we saw and heard last night, we estimate the record must be pretty damn good, and we look forward to acquiring it. The songs cover Oldham's typical lyrical territory of relationships, religion, nature and even some seafaring. But we were particularly pleased that the songs really rocked, not necessarily guitar-heavy but definitely a more aggressive rock sound than we have heard from Oldham since the stellar Viva Last Blues. Sweeney handled the lion's share of the guitar duties and his textural playing was a very pleasing new element for Oldham's work.

Some observations on Oldham live. We hadn't seen him play for about eight years, and we shudder slightly to recall the last performance during which he was rocking some serious Daisy Dukes (think Tobias from Arrested Development) and had started to show the lack of hair he still enjoys today. But anyway, Oldham is the rare performer that seems seriously afflicted by his music. This is different from the more commonplace performer who seems just afflicted by indulgence, you know, like that guy from the Libertines or any other addict-type. Last night Oldham contorted, half-jigged, pelvic thrusted, dug his hands into the back of his trousers, tossed his head back and often was too in the zone to even play the exquisite guitar slung around his neck (a gorgeous instrument with f-holes and a scrolled headstock, very similar in appearance to McCartney's trademark bass). Anyway, we haven't seen a performer manifesting so much in the way of outward madness for quite a long time. Jesus Lizard's David Yow comes to mind. And that show was probably 11 years ago.

Elsewhere: MP3 blog Blank Generation is no longer, long live its successor GetLevitation.Bradley's Almanac points us to a Swirlies site we never knew about, which apparently rotates rare Swirlies MP3s. Right now there are live cuts from 1995 for Zip file download. Sounds like there is a whole lot of dead air included in the set, as it is from a WBCN broadcast. Perhaps we can edit that out. Though it is very fitting, since we saw the Swirlies three times back in the day and have yet to see them ever actually get through a set smoothly. Anyway, there are good versions of "Bell" and "Sunn."

April 16, 2005

"There's no way to collapse the lung..."- Dinosaur Jr.

A brief post to say we can't stop watching the Dinosaur Jr. performance of "The Lung" from last night's Late Late Show (this web site sucks, don't go), only our favorite Dinosaur Jr. jam. Can't find video to link to yet, but we're sure someone like Stereogum or Chromewaves will have a link up by Monday. So J muffed a chord change or two, and sang characteristically around being in tune, and Barlow looked pretty bored. Murph just murphed out. Mascis has really become quite rotund, hasn't he? We've seen him in random places over the last five years or so, but we probably haven't seen him in about two years. We wonder if the weight affects his fingering when he plays? Not that he is really heavy. But he isn't really showing off his figure right now rocking the dyed Cousin It hair and over-sized green soccer jacket. Anyhoo, keep your eye out for the footage.

One other note: pursuant to our discussion of the Elevator Drops the other day, Brighaaaam pointed out that one of the band's principals continues on in an act called The Texas Governor, which has great songs at their MySpace page and plays Cambridge's Middle East tonight. Perhaps we'll check it out. Feels like we've been missing out on this.

That is all.

UPDATE: Check the comments for a link to the Dinosaur Jr. footage archived on the Free So Free fan site. Thanks Frank! We'll be posting more later today, including some gushing about how good the Bonnie "Prince" Billy show was last night.

April 15, 2005

"I never should have said the books that you read were all I loved you for." - The Sundays.

It was another big mail week at Clicky Clicky, or at least the latter portion, which saw dropped on our desk The Sunday's Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, Bedhead's initial four-song EP (recorded with two microphones in a church in a single take, with an amazin cover of Joy Division's "Disorder") and, most exciting of all, the gargantuan 1981 box set/compilation we've discussed previously and has been discussed ad nauseum at this ILM thread. The package is very nice, and the liner notes, although not annotated, tell the story of the creation of the compilation in a charmingly earnest fashion. Everyone should get this, the price is definitely right. Of course, our opinion could change after we listen to it all. But we suspect it won't.

Merge has posted Dinosaur Jr. tour dates. We can't believe we, and the majority of the Nozie posse, no less, are going to be on vacation that week. Balls.

April 14, 2005

"Be a Lemonhead or don't be anyone, be a Lemonhead and don't complain." - The Elevator Drops.

We love the new, or at least new to us, feature in The Onion's AV Club called Yesterday's Tomorrows. Partly because this is the kind of stuff we think about a lot, and partly because, we crap you negative, we just last week ripped our copy of Ned's Atomic Dustbin's Godfodder to our iPod and were rocking out to it. We support AV Club's assertion that NAD's second record was really not bad, and while it would be hard to bump "Happy" from the top slot in our mental estimation of the relative worth of Ned's songs, the song "Two and Two Made Five" is a very close second. We used to have this second record, Are You Normal?, on the flipside of a cassette that had The Lemonheads' Hate Your Friends on it as well, which meant it got more than it's fair share of scrutiny from us whilst walking the hallowed halls of Universitas Bucknellensis for the time we were there. Of course, to most people the band was just a bunch of really bad haircuts. But they were that and.. well, a little more.

While poking around for information about Ride's excellent Today Forever EP we came across this very detailed account of the band's recording history. The site claims Today Forever was released as a CD and videos are available for all the songs. We would be overjoyed to encounter such things used on the EBay, and in fact we've got our eyes on a couple sunning themselves there right now. It also notes a collection of unreleased recordings that was packaged as part of the OX4 box set. We may have to get that.

The "We Didn't Know That" File": Whilst wondering about the Miracle Legion again recently in the wake of our recent post about The Halo Bit, we learned rock band recording guy "Red" Lasus is cousins with a guy who was in Miracle Legion. More about Red, who recorded virtually all of the Haywood stuff, and his studio here.

April 11, 2005

"Whatcha gonna do when I quit trying to bring you back to life?" - Kam Fong.

Word on the street is that the forthcoming White Stripes record is to be titled "Get Behind Me Satan." Long-time readers and Fongophiles will know that this is the title of one of the more popular latter-period Kam Fong songs. In our ILM post we remarked to no one in particular that it really sucks that the White Stripes are going to turn this phrase into millions of dollars, while the almighty KF guys did what they could with it and then laid it down to go (eventually) back to straight jobs. It all smacks a little bit of capital U Universal Unfairness. Fortunately another ILM poster called us out as being whiners, rightfully so, to sort of bring us back to reality. But that doesn't lessen the tiny sting. Anyway, and for the record, here is Kam Fong's "Get Behind Me Satan." And a reminder: KamFong.com is still under development, and when it launches it is going to have a motherlode of music and other content. So yeehaw.

Eagle-eyed reader MLE, admitted to practice in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, points us to the New York Times' hard-hitting expose on what is on George Bush's IPod. Warning: you'll wish you had the three minutes back after you read it. In a nutshell: No surprise, W listens to what someone else tells him to listen to. The article claims it is a personal aide who loads him up, but we think Cheney is probably hand-selecting the tunes.

It appears that Lali Puna is about to release a two-disc odds 'n' sods come summer, according to Boomkat's web site, something Fluxblog obliquely refers to without actually referring to in a post today that includes an MP3 presumably from the set. We were bonkers for Lali Puna five years ago, and are still pretty bonkers about their last full-length, which perfected the big-guitar/electonic sound, in our opinion.

We read with great interest a feature in Sunday's New York Times magazine (believe us, it hurts to write a sentence that snooty - we never read NYT except for the music stuff on the web site. This was a special occasion) about TV ratings. It is a lengthy piece, but it is worth devoting your time to if you are interested in any way in the media, be it from the content, programming or advertising side. Basically, the discussion goes that by measuring the media that people are actually exposed to, rather than what they say they consume, the entire ideology behind the value of various media is going to dramatically shift. This will result is a seachange in terms of the division and allocation of ad dollars, and in turn production dollars, and in turn marketing dollars. All fairly fascinating. Perhaps this has something to do with why we couldn't find Charmin at the supermercado this week?

For all you old guys out there: EmptyFree bemoans the lack of new Psychedelic Furs material, and talks a bit about the current and preceding PF tour.

April 10, 2005

"Don't walk in on my friends." - Love as Laughter

Spent some pleasant hours traversing the Southeastern Pennsylvania countryside in a convertible over the weekend, this particular weekend being a Judas Priest weekend on one of the major Philadelphia rock radio stations. Which meant a little "Heading Out to the Highway," some "Hellbent for Leather." Besides the simple pleasures of commercial radio, we were also pleased to lock onto Franklin & Marshall's WFNM for some White Stripes and other indie rock delights.

Spent part of the evening downloading our monthly staple from EMusic, which so far has included Unwound's Repetition and Love As Laughter's 1996 effort The Greks Bring Gifts (featuring some hot cuts including "Youth Are Plastic" and "It's Only Lena"). The latter act, spearheaded by former Lync honcho Sam Jayne, has a forthcoming record called "Laughter's Fifth" that is atop our pile of discs that we need to review for Junkmedia.

We're expecting shipments this week of a couple hot old records including Drop Nineteens' excellent Delaware, an out of print shoegazer classic that includes hot numbers including "Winona," "Kick the Tragedy" and the title track. Since the joint is out of print, look for us to post a track or two later this week.

April 6, 2005

Clicky Clicky Healthbeat: It is definitely a stroke of good luck when you are working it out on the treadmill and Fu Manchu's "Evil Eye" comes on to take you through the last three minutes or so. Few songs can inspire the same degree of fist-banging mania. Next favorite cardio song currently: Drive Like Jehu's "Superunison." We here at Clicky Clicky are pondering a Music Development Program CD designed for use in the gym. We need to acquire digital versions of Judge's Bringin' It Down and Uniform Choice's Screaming For Change before we can make significant headway on such a mix, however. Why not leave your favorite indie rock songs or playlists for the gym in the comments? It will help us grow.

Am in receipt of Smashing Pumpkins' Gish as well as Lull EP and 1991 Peel Sessions. The bass guitar on Gish sounds really great, it just has really great intonation and resonance, not a lot of attack, just a nice low punch that walks around under the guitars.

MLE, admitted to practice in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, points us to this Elliot Smith site, which recently updated its collection of rare ES stuff.

Chromewaves nicely encapsulates that which is Velocity Girl, whose song "Wake Up, I'm Leaving" has been on our mind a lot lately. We once saw Velocity Girl in Philly touring in support of Copacetic. Sunny Day Real Estate opened, though we didn't see all of their set from what we recall. We do, of course, recall Sunny Day being awesome, and Sarah Shannon from V-Girl wearing shiny pants. We didn't know about the alleged reunion that sounds frozen in the works, or about the Excellent Online comp track that Frank thoughtfully links to. Check it out. We love Chromewaves, who are admittedly as stuck on '90s indie rock as we are.

Those as frustrated as we were with the slim pickins on the Dinosaur Jr reissues can seek some solace from The Good Doctor, who has posted a demo version of "Freak Scene" that is just the sort of thing we would have hoped to find on the Bug reissue.

"I spent the rest of the day inspiring those around me, uplifting the downtrodden, and generally hiding out in the office." Classic Two-Can.

April 5, 2005

"A denim jacket I haven't worn since March..." - The Trouble With Sweeney.

We think it is worth noting the digital release of the Smashing Pumpkins catalog, which we just breezed through over at ITunes and discussed a little on ILM today. It is really a monumental amount of music, and more of it is good than you can really expect from one band. Even if you draw the line at Siamese Dream, as many do -- no, screw that -- even if you draw the line at Gish, their first proper full length, you are left with a lot of great music. Our favorite number from that joint is "Snail," followed closely on by "Rhinocerous" and "Tristessa." Those songs equate to springtime for us. So it is nice that Corgan et al. have obliged us with today's release. It wasn't really until the spring of '93 that Gish really sunk in for us, despite the best efforts of Woods, who bought that shizzing (on cassette) shortly after Caroline released it in 1991. Anyhow, we plunked down a half dozen dollars (including shipping) for a used copy of Gish this morning, so it will be springtime here in Cambridge soon enough.

April 4, 2005

"She opens up the conversation with hey, what's that, over there?" - the Lilys.

This morning we hit a major milestone. We had arrived at the office to find waiting for us Che's British re-release of the Lilys' Better Can't Make Your Life Better. The purchase brought us tantalizingly closer to owning every commerically available Lilys tune. Che's version of BCMYLB is remixed and augmented and includes two songs not available on the domestic release, including "More Than That Is Deserved" (available also as the flipside to the first version of the "Nanny In Manhattan" single), while leaving off the US version's "The Sammael Sea." We'll contrast the finer points of the US and UK versions of the record at a later date.

Anyhow, around 10 AM a record we've sought for years landed on our desk. It was the Lilys' very hard to get Tone Bender EP, which compiles the first two Lilys 7 inches, which I haven't bothered to try to find. The EP is simply amazing. Clicky Clicky readers out there who struggle with the completist urge know that sometimes when you finally get your hands on something you find that the chase has been more satisfying than the record. Not so here. Sure, the title track and the closer, "Threw A Day," appear on In The Presence of Nothing ("Threw A Day" is unlisted on In the Presence -- it is the track that appears directly before "Claire Hates Me"). But it is tracks two and three of the Tone Bender EP, "Eskimo" and "February 14," both previously unheard by us, that are blowing our mind. Here's why.

Those with even a little interest in the Lilys know that stylistically they are a moving target. Much in the way astronomers can locate stars based on the activity of surrounding stars, we kind of suspected all along that we were going to love these two songs, that they resided somewhere in a mathematically projected stylistic sweet spot (sophisticated, guitar-heavy and hooky shoegaze) the band logically must have inhabited at one point along their trajectory. And we were right. "Eskimo" is clearly my favorite of the EP, but it is quite long and would be too large to post. So here is "February Fourteenth," which ain't too shabby neither.

We now own everything in the top portion of the discography at Returns Every Morning, not too mention many of the other items listed under the compilations and singles. So far as we know the only release available on CD that we don't have in the "Nanny In Manhattan" CD5. This is easily remedied, as the disc seems readily available used. The important milestone, of course, is we now own every commercially available Lilys song (we presume the Tim Buckley thing is a Tim Buckley song so we are not counting it). So kudos to us.

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The Farmhands record release listening party Sunday evening was an unqualified success. Somehow in our haste to avoid seeing the Sox give up more runs, and due to a need to ingest more allergy medication, we actually fled the (remodeled) Abbey Lounge before grabbing a disc. The double record, American League/National League,is really quite an effort, way too smart and full of catchy stuff, at turns gratifyingly or frustratingly lo-fi. Anyhow, the joint was jumping, a pretty clever video rig was set up showing the lyrics and related archival footage, and for a Sunday night the place was full. We'll let you know when the band's website goes up. Fungo was making some big promises about thorough hypertexting of the lyrics, so the thing should be pretty amazing. Another round of kudos, this one for Fungo, Sac Fly and High Cheese.

April 3, 2005

"Rot rot rot rot, rot rot rot rot."- Lost.

Often times here at Clicky Clicky when a song pops into our heads we have to make do with what we have. For example, there is very little one can do if they wake up on a Sunday morning wanting to hear the Pauly Klauss tune "Little Albert" or (the amazingly titled "1,100 Words You Need to Know"). The song was pulled out sometimes when Klauss was logging time with Manta Ray [website dead, now apparently with Kam Fong's Mike Boran on rhythm guitar], but to our knowledge there isn't a recording of it. So when the urge came today we went to the next best thing: Lost.

No, not the popular American television drama.

At the turn of the '90s, Lost was a suburban Philadelphia-based high school hardcore act that, as far as we know, first united bassist Klauss with Manta Ray's Erik Evol and Chris Hate. The act made available a couple cassettes, one (Do You Have A Problem?) with a singer named Mike and one without (self-titled). When we go to the cassette crates we usually reach for the one with Mike on vocals for a couple reasons. First, this is the first Lost tape we got, and we devoted a lot of time listening to it while doing such teen activities as cutting lawns and running to be in shape for high school sports. Second, despite the demonstrably more creative and smart efforts on the self-titled cassettes, the recording quality seems to suffer a bit and the playing gets bit loose as the band relaxes its adherence to an orthodox hardcore sound.

Back in the day it wasn't deemed cool (by the admittedly few informed enough to have an opinion) to prefer early model Lost to the late model act, and the self-titled tape's song "Eyes" was held up as the band's pinnacle number. Be that as it may, we find it hard to deny the first tape, and the earnestness of "Don't Smoke Crack," the horrorcore of "Pig House," or the suburban everyman story of Do You Have A Problem's title track. Here's the opening track, "After the War."

To pass some allergy-beleaguered time this weekend we dug out our aforementioned Yuengling boxes of cassettes and made an informal list of songs from old mix tapes that we need to acquire in a more appropriate format for the digital age. Coincidentally we also were presented with a search strand for Google that does a fair job of identifying where a savvy person might be able to find specific songs available. Here we present a list of the songs from cassettes in our dusty boxes that we've acquired in a more IPod friendly format:

Speaking of old, to the extent that this is news at all, you may be interested to note that there is about to be a large promotional push for the digital release of the Smashing Pumpkins catalog, according to our favorite Ice Magazine contributor. Hopefully this will drive down the used prices for a copy of Gish, since I still don't think I want to pay more than five bucks to get a copy of the CD on my shelf.

April 1, 2005

"Read the Metro section, read the metro section..." - Silver Jews

[Sick Day Bonus Post/Pope Death Watch]

Earlier this week we Bostonites had the opportunity to catch a theatrical showing of the new Morrissey DVD. Clicky Clicky dutifully skipped it in favor of a quiet evening at home, but you can get a full rundown over at Bradley's Almanac.

Chromewaves shocks us by admitting never having listened to the Archers of Loaf, but returns promptly to our good graces by linking us to this AOL tribute site that we'd never seen before. Includes mucho live bootlegs for tradeseys.

If you can read, you can read an old (although we don't know how old, it is around the time of the release of Precollections) Magnet inteview with Kurt Heasley of the Lilyshere. It is particularly interesting in that it captures and discusses with Heasley the crazy leaps and bounds his mind makes. The interview also includes the outlandish Lilys member-count: the band, according to Heasley at the time of the interview, has had 63 members. That must be approaching Menudo-ish proportions, no?